Various treatment units, to which patients are connected or which are connected to patients, are used for the treatment of patients in medical technology. The connection between the patient and a treatment unit generally takes place via tubes or lines. A known treatment unit includes, for example, dialysis machines with an extracorporeal blood circuit.
Additionally, it is known to operate medical treatment units together with one or more peripheral devices. Such peripheral devices serve, for example, to monitor the patient during the treatment, with the collected data being transmitted to the treatment unit.
Although there is a fixed connection between the treatment unit and the patient via tubes or lines, the data transfer between the peripheral device and the treatment unit can take place wirelessly, for example by radio or light signals. The operator can thus immediately detect the allocation between the treatment unit and the patient on the basis of the fixed connection, but cannot immediately detect the allocation between the peripheral device and the treatment unit.
If a plurality of treatment units and peripheral devices are operated together in a single treatment area, it is necessary in each case to allocate a treatment unit and a peripheral device to a patient and to create a connection from the respective peripheral device to the respective treatment unit for the data transfer. An incorrect allocation of a peripheral device and a treatment unit would result in the data of one patient being transferred to the treatment unit of another patient.
Since, in the extreme case, such a mismatched data transfer can lead to life-threatening complications during treatment, it must be ensured that the correct allocation is made between the peripheral device and the patient on the one hand, and between the peripheral device and the treatment unit on the other hand. This is especially problematic with the known peripheral devices and treatment units, since the allocation between peripheral device and treatment unit cannot easily be detected by personnel in the case of a wireless connection.
If a plurality of devices that are communicating with one another are operated at the same time, use is generally made of so-called identification (ID) signals, which can detect which peripheral device signal is being received. U.S. Pat. No. 6,332,094 B1, for example, describes a pulsometer, which transfers the pulse signals together with an identification signal wirelessly to a receiver.